


A Time For Joy

by Ammar



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-08-07 05:55:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7703128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ammar/pseuds/Ammar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The War Doctor is reminded of why he fights.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Time For Joy

Arcadia is a city under siege, and as the War Doctor strides through the streets of the city, he finds it remarkable: just how life goes on, as above them, the flashes of light from Dalek weapons sizzle ineffectively off the four hundred sky trenches.

For now, Arcadia is the safest place on Gallifrey, or so the War Council keeps claiming.

The War Doctor isn’t so sure about that. The long years of the Time War have taken their toll on him, and watching world after world burn; too many lives lost, too many friends falling at different points of time and space—he doesn’t know if the war will ever end. If it will ever be won. And if the Time War cannot be won, then well…

Arcadia won’t remain the safest place on Gallifrey, for long. Perhaps there won’t even be a Gallifrey. Just dust, in the blackness of space.

He’s weary and caked with dust; the burns are already treated, so he files them away as irrelevant, and he’s not even sure why he’s come back to Gallifrey, to the streets and markets of Arcadia, when the only thing he’s really aching for is several moments of peace and quiet and a hot cup of tea before he reports in and gets sent somewhere else.

Problem is, the TARDIS is out of tea. In fact, the War Doctor has a distinct suspicion that she’s trying to send him a non-subtle nudge to go to Arcadia, or Earth, or basically, just about anywhere that’s _not_ a war-zone and that has tea.

Alright, so maybe he’s not doing so good on that second front. Last he checked, you couldn’t really get proper Earth tea on Arcadia either; the really strong, bracing kind, with just a dash of milk.

Oh, that’s right, he thinks whimsically. If the Daleks win the Time War, there won’t be any tea either. But now, he’s not certain there’ll be tea, even if they win.

If they can even win.

* * *

“There’s something you need to learn,” Koschei tells him.

This is a dream, of course, mingling with memory: this is before they gaze into the heart of the Untempered Schism, before he takes the name that is the promise he’s breaking (“Doctor no more,” he’s whispered, all but proclaimed), before Koschei is _the Master_. This is long before the skies of Gallifrey are bristling with sky trenches; before smoke and ash from disintegrations linger in the air, before bodies fall all over the fields of red and golden grasses and rise again as Dalek puppets.

“And I suppose you know what it is,” he replies, lazily. Their dæmons are tussling in the long grass; barely visible, except as flickers of movement.

Koschei draws his knees up against his chest. “I’m serious,” he says, with the brash confidence of the very-young.

“So what is it, then?”

“You can’t save everyone,” Koschei says. “And,” he holds up a hand to forestall the inevitable protest, “You _especially_ can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.”

* * *

Everyone has a breaking point.

In retrospect, the War Doctor will say he’s only surprised it took him that long to break. Cass was, all things considered, the very last straw—the one that broke the proverbial camel’s back; hers was the death the Sisterhood of Karn wielded, ruthlessly, like a honed knife, cracking him wide open. 

They wanted him to fight in the war.

He wanted…

He wanted an end to helplessness, to watching those like Cass die when he _could_ ’ _ve_ saved them (Koschei says, always cool, always assured, “You can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.” But he’s wrong; if only Cass had listened, if only he’d been able to convince her he wasn’t with them, he’s different…)

He was just. So. Tired. And. Sick.

Make her death count for something and all that.

(“Will it hurt,” he asks, and she says, yes.

“Good,” he says, and means it.)

* * *

He counts the bodies, on those sleepless nights. The bodies pile up; old friends and colleagues and unknown people who he just can’t save.

 _“You can’t save everyone,”_ but oh, he tries, he tries, and even a warrior’s hearts can be broken over and over again by failure.

He scratches the tallies on the walls of the TARDIS, painstaking stroke by painstaking stroke, and his dæmon growls softly but cannot dissuade him from this task; if he cannot save them, he will at least remember and carry them with him.

 _“No more,”_ he whispers, as he counts the bodies, as he adds ever more to the tallies. “No more!” he shouts, and it echoes, almost mockingly, in the TARDIS, the cry of an old, old Time Lord: _no more, no more, no more_. 

* * *

From Gallifrey to the far reaches of the Ythrex Cluster, at the very edges of the universe, galaxies burn; worlds are ravaged, and the only thing the War Doctor can see, at every point of time, at every point of space, is ruin and destruction and, above all things, death.

Every battle brings a new development, yet another forbidden weapon from the Omega Arsenal in the Time Vaults deployed, because no matter what they do, the Daleks inch steadily ever-forwards, until they menace even the sky trenches of Gallifrey itself.

And still the High Council claims the sky trenches have never been breached, and all he can do is to shake his head because they won’t listen to him, and once Rassilon sits on the Council, the impact of Romana’s moderating voice has steadily faded; no one’s ready to listen to reason, and least of all the High Council of Gallifrey.

 _Rassilon,_ the War Doctor mouths, both curse and oath.

His hand shakes as he clutches at his cup of hot tea, until he stares at it, willing it to still.

_("You can’t save everyone,” Koschei whispers, in his skull, and he buries it deep. “You especially can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.”)_

* * *

He’s run this regeneration ragged, and he’s still weary and heartsick and he can’t see an end in sight. It’s easy to say, “Doctor no more,” but it’s another thing to make himself _mean_ it, to carry a gun, to kill.

Killing gets easier after time; by now, it’s become almost habitual, really, like drinking a cup of tea—remember to kill some Daleks before lunch, and what have you. Part of him doesn’t like that, at all. Doesn’t like who he’s become. Old instincts die hard, and there’s only so far you can run from who you are, even one regeneration later.

He settles for a cup of hot soup, some currency exchanges hands. No one tries to make conversation with him. It suits him just fine. Bearing his cup, he stops, drawn short by the sound of children laughing. He ends up settling down at a street corner, sitting on a protrusion barrier, watching the children play, chasing each other around the pole bearing brightly-coloured streamers. Their dæmons are frolicing about: some of them have taken the form of flutterwings, others rabbits and birds and mice.

Children, the War Doctor thinks, can get used to almost anything, even being under almost-constant siege from the attacking Dalek force.

And when Arcadia burns, the children burn with it.

His dæmon pads over, lays her head in his lap. He runs a hand, absently, through her fur, and she purrs softly.

“Don’t stop,” she says, her voice soft, and he smiles and complies. There are, he supposes, the simple pleasures: your dæmon laying her head in your lap, you stroking her, a hot cup of soup from the market, watching the children of Arcadia play. Perhaps that’s balm for the weary soul.

“Is that your dæmon?”

It’s a child’s voice; high, piping, and curious, and the War Doctor sets his cup down before he croaks, “Yes. Yes, she is.”

Her dæmon is a pale flutterwing, perched on her shoulder, but this child who’s approached him is far more interested in _his_ dæmon. They don’t have snow leopards on Gallifrey, of course, and how she usually ends up settling in the form of an Earth animal for most of his regenerations is something the War Doctor considers a byproduct of: A. the Earth’s startling biodiversity, and B. the amount of time he actually spends there.

Has spent there.

“What is her name?” the child asks.

“My name,” his dæmon replies, because she doesn’t need _him_ to do all the talking for her, “Is Ananda.”

“Ananda,” the child repeats, tries it out. “It’s a curious name. I’ve never heard it before.”

“That’s because it’s Sanskrit,” the War Doctor says. He nurses his cup, now, letting the warmth seep into old, _old_ hands. “An old language from Earth.”

She cocks her head. “What does it mean?”

“Bliss,” he says. At the same time, Ananda replies, “That joy in existence without which the universe will fall apart and collapse.” It’s the overly-casual way in which she says it that gives it away, and he glances down sharply at her, but her bright green eyes are intent on the girl-child who’s asked the question, not on him.

The girl considers it, solemnly. “That’s a big name,” she says.

Ananda yawns and stretches, languidly, her soft, spotted fur rippling with the movement. The girl doesn’t ask if she can touch Ananda, of course. This is the one great taboo; the one neither of them will break. But she does look like she comes close to doing so. “It’s my name,” Ananda replies.

“You’re so beautiful,” the girl whispers.

“Thank you,” Ananda says, smugly, her voice positively saturated with satisfaction.

He’s never going to hear the end of it, later.

* * *

Later, back in the battered old confines of the TARDIS:

“It’s lovely to have admirers, for once,” Ananda says, curled up in her familiar corner of the console room, with a tartan cushion.

He clears his throat. “What you said to that girl…”

A faint growl. “It is true,” Ananda says. “We choose our names, just as you choose yours.” Her tail flicks idly.

He knows that, of course. Just as he named himself the Doctor—a name he has now rejected but cannot quite seem to get rid of, she has named herself Ananda, after a language from a distant planet in a dusty old book, half-forgotten.

They make their promises, and break them, trample upon them until they are so much dust.

“I’ve never quite heard it put that way before.”

“What,” says Ananda softly, “Is life, or even a universe, without joy?”

“Joy-in-existence,” the War Doctor repeats, thoughtfully. It has an almost lyrical quality to it; something that he hasn’t experienced in…oh, almost the entirety of this regeneration. This regeneration was fashioned for war and death and blood and long silences, and precious little joy.

It’s a fitting word, perhaps, to describe the children of Gallifrey: existing from moment to moment of sheer joy, glorying in life, in existence itself, laughing and chasing each other, the brightly-coloured streamers flying.

He squeezes his eyes shut. He’s getting old, old and weary and heartsore, and he can’t see an end to this Time War. He’s killed, and killed, and killed, and still, there’s always more to be done.

Gently, Ananda pads over to him and rubs her head against his hand, so he strokes her, running his fingers through her fur again and again.

Ananda, his soul, given form. He never quite knows who he’ll be, after each regeneration: both of them exploring their new forms, Ananda flickering from shape to shape until she finally settles. She’s never had anything quite as lethal before. But she is always this: his soul, his conscience.

He is so terribly lonely, but he can’t—won’t ask anyone else to fight by his side.

“Ónen i-estel edain, ú-chebin estel anim,” Ananda says, pointedly, in that velvet voice, like silk, like a hot cup of tea after a day’s weariness.

“So _that’s_ where that book went,” he replies. His laugh is more of a dry, cracked, wheeze. Never let it be said that the only good thing to come out of Britain was tea. “And here I’d thought one of them’d taken it with them when they left.” Old memories, now. Old companions—friends, gone, left to their own lives. Some to their own deaths.

“There is a time for all things,” he says, more soberly, to his dæmon. “For sorrow, for setting down burdens, yes, even for joy…but not now.” Not when the Time War rages; not when every moment in space and time is burning. Not when worlds are devastated and he can’t even say whether by Time Lord or by Dalek.

You win, he thinks, or you die. That’s how bad the Time War’s become. Perhaps that’s how bad it’s been all along; they just haven’t really _seen_.

And—and if he fights for joy, if he fights for the children, laughing, inured to the presence of the Daleks trying to break through the sky trenches above Arcadia—if he fights for all the children, who understand that joy in existence without which the universe will fall apart and collapse—

Well.

It’s enough for a weary old man. Or Time Lord.

Or a Doctor turned to the cause of war.

“And for you?” Ananda presses him. It breaks his heart, the memories of her splattered in blood, her killing claws extended. He knows the killing weighs as heavily on her as it does on him, and how perverse it is, that he’s dragged both himself and his TARDIS and his dæmon into this war.

And so he says, gravely, “Dearheart…” It’s a term of address that dies on his tongue, on this rough, gravelly voice. He hasn’t used it at all in this regeneration. He doesn’t know if it sounds right. “It is enough to know,” he says. “To give myself to the fire, knowing that somewhere out there…” he gestures, futilely. Words. This regeneration is not good with them. He knows that. _“Make me a warrior,”_ he’d said, in the body before this one. This regeneration is grim and fit and lethal and meant for war and killing, not for love, not for laughter or joy.

Ananda understands, anyway. She quietly runs her tongue along his hand, gently, offering him whatever comfort she can. In the end, they’re bound too tightly into this war, warp and weft, Time Lord and dæmon, and there’s no running away, not now.

He strokes her, and almost allows himself to dream of an ending; of a time for joy.

**Author's Note:**

> References to Lord of the Rings, and to A Swiftly Tilting Planet.


End file.
